Kinect + Minecraft Trifecta

Today we have a special treat, three projects combining the “fastest selling consumer electronics device”, Kinect, and the “fastest selling indie java game that once kept us from sleeping for an entire weekend”, Minecraft!

[Sean Oczkowski] writes in to tell us about his efforts to play Minecraft with Kinect using no more than the OpenKinect Java wrapper on Ubuntu. The code was written in about 4 days with some help from Wikipedia. Using histograms to locate the player in the field of view, the script calculates the center mass of the body and defines interactions for the limb occupying that quadrant of the screen. [Sean] does an excellent job of running through the whole process as well as the decisions made along the way. The whole thing is a bit like running in place, and we can’t imagine the flailing that will occur during the inevitable creeper encounter.

Next we have [Wade McGillis] with his award winning Minecraft Kinect Controller. [Wade] provides source code and executables at his site. This version of control uses skeletal tracking data to sense the user’s gestures. This still involves holding your hands out like a zombie but it is a bit more versatile as one can pass their arms in front of their own body.

Finally [Nathan Viniconis] has been doing some very interesting work using the Kinect to import giant three dimensional models into the game world. [Nathan] then goes the extra mile and animates the figures! Check out the video below for the really impressive results. We here at Hackaday feel that this is the most appropriate use of this technology, and may begin building gigantic statues of ourselves on public servers.

15 thoughts on “Kinect + Minecraft Trifecta”

didn’t the developer for minecraft promise to the people who bought the beta that he would give them a full release for free when it came out of beta? Didn’t he also scrap minecraft altogether just to start on minecraft 2? I think he also said that everyone would have to buy #2 and it would be the same as before — ie: buy the beta and get the full ver for free. so why would anyone want to pay for a version of this gmod ripoff, especially when the developer is obviously a new Gabe Newell? correct me if I’m wrong please.

Looks kinds cool. I’ve only played minecraft for about 1 or 2 minutes so I’m not too familiar with it. Can someone explain the third video?

It seems like the premise of the whole game is to build things by slowly chipping away at the land scape and combining materials to build new tools and stuff. So, if you can build huge, complex structures with software, then why bother with all the chipping away and whatnot?

Lots of people do that, there are many programs were you can edit your inventory and have what ever you want. Many servers even have this built in for online play.But lots of people enjoy the normal “vanilla” play, where you have to mine for everything.

@bunedoggle
So, if you can do certain tasks to acquire points with software, then why bother with all the tasks away and whatnot? Why not run a memory editor on Super Mario Bros to give yourself 9999999 points and skip to the ending sequence?
Why play at all?

This is not new though. This project was released a few months ago for a contest.

There was a time when notch (not “Notch”) said only who buys Alpha gets the full game. A month later, he took it back and now Beta will offer you the full game when it’s released and any patches and updates after that. I wouldn’t have bought it if that wasn’t the case.